"Sit back" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after—success. Of course, it is a satisfaction to have done what you set out to do. But I tell you, laddie, that after your money is made, the zest of the game is gone. Your fortune rolls up then without you and all you have to do is to sit back and watch it grow of itself. It doesn't seem to be a part of you any more. You feel old, and unnecessary, and out of it. You ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... yer bags could jist go on board the ship before the loving husband came off; ye'd make the harbour that way as easy, and I'm thinking the ice on the other side of the bay is that thick ye'd be scared and want me to sit back in my boat and yelp for help, like a froightened puppy dog, instead of ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... assurance, her fear gradually went away, and in fifteen minutes she was willing to let go her hold upon the saddle-horn, and to try to follow his instructions. He taught her how to place her feet in the stirrups, how to clutch with her knees, how to rise in the saddle for a trot, how to sit back for a canter; until at length—wonder of wonders!—Vivian, her hair flying in the wind, her eyes filled with triumph, actually cantered with Donald at her side toward the others, who to a rider turned in their saddles and cheered her approach. And pride filled ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... of the home must be to teach habits of right living and daily action, and a joy and pride in life as well as responsibility for life. It is not fair that the parents should sit back and shift to the school the whole responsibility for ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... light-heartedly, refreshed in body and soul. For Monte had been himself ever since they started—better than himself. He had humored her every mood, allowing her to talk when she had felt like talking, or to sit back with her eyes half closed when she wished to give herself up to lazy content. Often, too, he had made her laugh with his absurd remarks—laugh spontaneously, as a child laughs. She had never seen him in such good humor, ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... hour except on the chance of getting some word? She didn't even telephone last night. I had to show myself in front of the curtain and give them a spiel about a sudden indisposition. And believe me, gentlemen, audiences ain't what they used to be. Did these ginks sit back and take the show for what it was worth? Not by a darn sight. Flocked to the box office and howled for their money back. If she doesn't appear to-night I might as well close ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... the station when he strolled over to that place. The county officials at Boggs City came down and began a cursory investigation, but Anderson's emphatic though doleful opinions set them quite straight, and they gave up the quest. There was nothing to do but to sit back and wait. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... not prevent them from giving their lives to lift the soddenness and accelerate the Inertia of the crowds. They took their joy in the great goodness of the plan—only after they had done their best to bring the race more swiftly into its higher destiny. A man does not sit back and allow his children to spend years in learning that which he can explain in a moment from his own experience.... I did not answer the philosopher, but many things that occurred from that little talk were brought out in Chapel during the days ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... said Denham solemnly, "let me inform your ignorance exactly what would happen. I know the chief from old experience. He'll sit back and listen to you with one of those pleasant smiles he puts on when he's working himself up into a rage. He'll completely disarm you— as he did me once—and all the time, as he hears you patiently to the end, he'll think ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me to do. I'm damned ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... through the surf. If the surf be high, coming ashore is a delicate operation; for, should the boat be turned broadside on, she would be thrown over upon the oarsman, and both washed up the beach in a flood of sandy salt-water; so it requires some little steadiness to sit back to the coming wave, hear the increasing roar, and feel the sudden lift and toss shoreward which each roller gives you as it plunges down upon the sand. Just before coming to the outer edge of the surf, I was seen by my friends, who hastened down the cliff-road to receive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... probably has a unit out looking for us right now. And in the second place, as long as we stay with the ship, we've got shade. That sun is only bad because the atmosphere is thinner here on Mars, and easier to burn through. But if we stay out of the sun, we're O.K. Just sit back ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... English stations haven't started this afternoon. A few minutes ago I heard a German aeroplane signalling by wireless to a German battery and directing its fire. I could tell every time the gun was ordered to fire and every time the aviator said the shot was short or over. It's kinder funny to sit back here in quiet and listen in the war, isn't it?" I agreed it was weird ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... queer going on here, old man," he began presently. "You'll say it's none of my business, maybe, and I reckon it isn't. But unless I've sized 'em up wrong, Lynch and his gang are a bunch of crooks, and I'm not the sort to sit back quietly and leave a lady like Miss Thorne to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... "I could not sit back there in the wagon and think," said I. "I knew that you would be riding before long, and I guessed I ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... passengers. The attempts made at order and regularity in the arrangements altogether failed. Every body seemed in confusion. The carriages are of two sorts—the first class, and the char—banc. The latter are all open; the people sit back to back, and face to face, as they like, and get at their places by scrambling, squeezing, and altercation. Even the Marquis had a hard fight to preserve the seats which he had taken for his family. At Malines, the train changes carriages. Here a curious scene ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... eager-eyed and silent, sit back on their thrones. The door of the Valhalla of Great Actors swings slowly shut. No Flo Ziegfeld lighting this time, but a great shoot of sunshine for a "garden." And the music different, easier to sing to, somehow. Music of harps and flutes. And a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... was like a tonic to her during these days of overwork. He seemed to be entirely unaffected by the general depression, a fact which he attributed himself to the happy accident of being in a position to sit back and watch the others toil. But in reality Jill knew that he was working as hard as any one. He was working all the time, changing scenes, adding lines, tinkering with lyrics, smoothing over principals whose nerves had become strained by the incessant rehearsing, keeping within bounds Mr Goble's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the same old song and dance?" inquired Dr. Rosencrans in deep disgust. "We'll send out a professional beggar to the different churches of the state, and then sit back and wait for ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my say out, and Lady Alicia sat looking at me with a sort of mild and impersonal surprise. But she declined to argue about it all. And it was just as well she didn't, I suppose, for I had my Irish up and didn't intend to sit back and see ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... in mid-ocean and never know a shore. It began to groan in the chimney as if it were a wild beast struggling to escape, and then the smoke came down in whorls and filled the kitchen. They had to put out the fire to keep themselves from suffocation, and to sit back from the fireplace to protect themselves from cold. The door of the porch flew open, and they barricaded it with long-handled brushes; the windows rattled in their frames, and they blocked them up with the tops of the tables. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... when you think of the women on the Street,—Tillie, Harriet Kennedy, Sidney Page, myself, even Mrs. Rosenfeld back in the alley,—somebody else moulds things for us, and all we can do is to sit back and suffer. I am beginning to think the world is a terrible place, K. Why do people so often marry the wrong people? Why can't a man care for one woman and only one all his life? Why—why is it ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... your old masters to work your land and pay his rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... in many directions sight-seeing in their cosy little pony carriage. It is a nice little two-wheeled affair. I believe the orthodox name of it is a croydon. It carries four, who sit back to back, while the back seat turns up when not wanted. It was in quite a different trap that I rode in on my visit to Glenveigh. During my journey there we talked, my guide and I, of what constitutes a good landlord. It was a negative sort of goodness which he expected from the good landlord—"that ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Mexican half-breed of his, Del Pinzo!" declared Snake. "Anyhow, they got away with a bunch of your steers, Bud, an' now what are we goin' t' do? Are we goin' t' sit back an' let 'em ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... so far as he could see, everything was in perfect working order and he had only to sit back and enjoy his triumph and receive congratulations; for once more Mr. Sprudell ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... everything looking bright and clean. Pass along the same streets in the afternoon, and you will find gaily-dressed ladies flocking the pathways. The shops are bustling with customers. There are many private carriages to be seen, with two-wheeled cars, on which the passengers sit back to back, these (with the omnibuses) being the public conveyances of Melbourne. Collins Street may be regarded as the favourite promenade; more particularly between three and four in the afternoon, when shopping is merely the excuse of ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... was younger she would sit back from the fire, with the corn-popper on her lap and her cheeks as red as cranberries, and say: "I DON'T know why I tell you all these things, Minnie, but Aunt Honoria's funny, and I can't talk to Dorothy; she's too young, you know. Well, HE said—" ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... till after their recent long talk in the park that she knew how deeply, how quite exhaustively, they had then communicated—so that they were to remain together, for the time, in consequence, quite in the form of a couple of sociable drinkers who sit back from the table over which they have been resting their elbows, over which they have emptied to the last drop their respective charged cups. The cups were still there on the table, but turned upside ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... it once more," he decided. "We Ingmars begin all over again when things go wrong. No man that is a man can sit back calmly and let a woman fret ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... You can sit back here and sneer at me, can't you? And feel so big and smart and triumphant! What've you done but catch a girl at her first bungling job! It makes you feel awfully cocky, don't it? 'What a big man am I!' ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... and time-honored nostrum, which is administered with a glow of moral self-esteem, and no more thought about it. When a murderer is sent to jail for life, or a bank burglar or white slaver or financial crook for his specified term, do we not sit back in our chairs and clear our throats with a self-satisfied "hem!" and "There's one scoundrel has got his deserts, anyway!" Had it been your brother, father, son, or yourself, would you employ such language? ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... I—I don't mean just school. How do you think I feel when all the girls begin to talk about Europe and all, and I got to sit back at sewing-club like ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... play the great actress, Porter, and I, and one or two others were to have supper at the Breslin Hotel. I think Porter took me there that he might sit back and enjoy my unabashed criticisms to the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... be great fun for us old fellows to sit back and watch you young ones," the elder man ejaculated. "There are several good-sized jobs waiting ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... on the elder's pale countenance. "You mustn't think it doesn't hurt me, Nettie, to—to see you away from all the pleasure. It tears at my heart dreadful. That is part of the punishment." The girl made a vivid gesture, "But you sit back and take it!" she cried. "You talk of it as punishment. I won't! I won't! I'm ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be the best thing for you, my dear," said Ruth, as she smoothed her hair. "Come," she whispered to the others, "we will sit back here and let her rest," and she motioned them to come into the curtained-off recess of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... speak of this—I do think that as host you ought to sit back and listen, and let your guests have a chance to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... journal," said Psmith, "I saw that I was on to a good thing. I had long been convinced that about the nearest approach to the perfect job in this world, where good jobs are so hard to acquire, was to own a paper. All you had to do, once you had secured your paper, was to sit back and watch the other fellows work, and from time to time forward big cheques to the bank. Nothing could be more nicely attuned to the tastes of a Shropshire Psmith. The glimpses I was enabled to get ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cherished by the mass of the nation that a Central Europe Economic Alliance will amply compensate us for any shortcomings elsewhere, and enable us to sit back and snap our fingers at the rest of the world is too absurd to be entertained by serious men. Our trade, import and export, with Austria-Hungary was as great as it could be for many years to come, and it was only a small part of our total trade. After the war, as before, the bulk of our trade ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the money could be earning. Why, Maggie, I never saw anything like it." Her face grew suddenly alert and happy. "I never knew before how much money, just MONEY, could earn, while you didn't have to do a thing but sit back and watch it do it. It's the most fascinating thing I ever saw. I counted up the other day how much we'd have if we didn't spend a cent of it for ten years—the ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... said. "We cannot sit and look at one another all the evening. With music one can make dinner last out till nine or even half past—an idea, my Louise!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Cannot we go to a music-hall, the Alhambra, for example? We could take a box and sit back." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... leaning forward, whereat old Mr. King laid a warning hand upon the well arm. "There, there, Phronsie; sit back, child;" so she obeyed. "But, Grandpapa, he said there was an old fox at Joey's school," she declared, dreadfully excited, and ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... Mr. Waterman. "Suppose, before we reach the next rapids, that you get out a moment, shift some of the load up into the bow and have Pud sit back of the first thwart. That will ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton |
